Comment On his first day in a Russian prison, the 16-year-old boy said he heard the anguished screams of other Ukrainians. Sitting in a 6-foot-by-6-foot cell with a broken toilet, Vlad Buryak wondered if he would be next. Buriak, the son of a high-ranking Ukrainian government official, was abducted by Russian soldiers as he tried to escape his hometown of Melitopol in early April. His case became one of thousands: The growing but impossible to trace number of abducted or forcibly disappeared Ukrainian civilians. But his story is different from most. Vlad came home. His unlikely release offers a ray of hope in a dark time. With the war in its 20th week, fierce fighting continues along the front line in eastern Ukraine. Russian rocket attacks are killing more civilians every day, Ukrainian officials say, and allegations of atrocities have piled up. Many of the thousands of disappeared never reappear, representing a particular challenge for war crimes investigators. Vlad’s case opens a rare window into the experience of the legions of Ukrainians still held in Russian-occupied territory, in facilities inaccessible to international rights monitors or independent journalists. In an interview with the Washington Post shortly after his safe return, the teenager recounted the 90-day saga for the first time in an English-language publication. According to Vlad and his father, Oleg Buryak, Russian troops took Vlad to a prison in Vasylivka, a town in the occupied part of Zaporizhzia province in the southeast of the country. For the first few days he was kept in solitary confinement, he said. Sitting in his prison cell, Vlad couldn’t understand what was happening. “Why am I in this place and when will I come home?” he thought. But the initial shock quickly turned into pure terror. Less than a week after arriving at the prison, Vlad said a man in his 20s was taken to the same cell. He heard the young man being beaten and electrocuted, the torture sometimes lasting up to three hours at a time, he said. Soon, the man said he couldn’t take it anymore. He would rather “leave this earth than continue to be tortured,” he told Vlad. He had one last wish: for Vlad to tell his story. Vlad said the man then reached for the lid of a can and slashed his wrists. The teenager sat next to him, holding his hand as they slowly walked away. But before he took his last breath, Vlad said, a guard came and called a doctor, who took him away. Vlad never learned whether the man, who said he had a wife and child, survived. The Post was unable to independently verify Vlad’s account. However, Ukrainian human rights groups monitoring enforced disappearances said Vlad’s testimony was consistent with that of other victims who were released and said torture was “standard practice.” The United Nations has also reported many cases of Russian soldiers torturing civilians and military prisoners. And US officials this week accused Russian forces of forcibly detaining or disappearing thousands of Ukrainian civilians, and said many of them were being tortured. Russia has repeatedly denied any allegations of torture or other war crimes. After the horrific episode, Vlad, alone in his cell, felt isolated again. To pass the time, he filled his days with menial tasks, preparing his own food, reading and sleeping. He also said he was forced to clean the room where other prisoners were being tortured, where he often found medical supplies soaked in blood, an effort he undertook with a pragmatic, almost militaristic mindset. “I had no feelings,” he said. “I’ve bottled it all up. I acted as if nothing had happened. I didn’t show aggression, so they won’t do the same thing to me.” Regardless of the horrors he witnessed – along with beatings and electric shocks, the prisoners had needles under their fingernails – Vlad remained distracted. “I realized that at that moment I was also saving myself,” he added. But inside: “I was extremely scared. I was shocked. As if everything burned inside me.” Some moments were too disturbing to process. One day, for example, he said he entered the torture room to find a man hanging from the ceiling, his hands tied with cables. A Russian soldier sat near the badly beaten prisoner and, seemingly unperturbed, took notes. At home, Vlad’s father was engaged in a frantic, detective-like pursuit of his son. As head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Command, Oleg Buryak relied on his government connections, desperate to set up a prisoner exchange. Nothing was working. After nearly seven weeks in a Russian prison, Vlad was moved to a facility with better conditions, where he could bathe regularly and call his father. Unsure if he would ever see him again, Vlad kept repeating two phrases, like a mantra. There are no situations that cannot be solved. On July 4, Buriak received a call from a Russian negotiator who told him he was ready to release Vlad. There are some details of the delicate exchange that Buryak said he could not divulge. some, he said he still doesn’t understand. Vlad would be part of a three-person prisoner exchange, he said, and would be flown back to Ukrainian soil in a civilian evacuation convoy. Two days later, Vlad called his father. “Dad, they say I’ll come to you tomorrow.” The last few hours were painful for father and son. Buriak greeted Vlad at the side of a road, near the zero line, where Ukrainian and occupied territories converge. Dressed in camouflage armor and blue jeans, Buryak flagged down a van. Vlad came out the side door and the two embraced. After all. Buriak rested his forehead on his son’s shoulder while holding him. His police escort had to remind him that they were standing in a war zone: “Oleg, let’s go,” they said. “Lets go, lets go”. “When Vlad was kidnapped, I felt like a piece of my heart was ripped out of me,” Buryak said. “And when I hugged him, I felt that part come back.” But the country is still at war. The trauma of Vlad’s incarceration will linger long after his release. The sounds of torture, the fear of being recaptured, and the smell of a bloodstained cleaning rag have kept him alert and resentful. He said he feels at least five years older. In an interview less than a week after his return, Vlad adopted the same stoic, determined manner as his father. He said he now spends his days volunteering for the war effort, distributing humanitarian aid and sharing his story. His jaw dropped, he said he wants to keep reliving what he saw, even the worst parts. “I don’t want to forget any of this,” he said, “so I can tell other people and make sure people know.”
